Stephenie Meyer owns all things Twilight.

LovelyBrutal, thank you so much for all the ways you care for my work, my heart, my old man back, and my fluffiest friend. i love you so much.

thank you guys so much for reading and talking about this with me. i love and look forward to the honor of it every week.

it's all happening.

i am a true romantic

free falling

love addict

Glass Animals: Poplar Street

IV

I am equal parts docile and dire.

We're still standing at the front desk. Jessica's still talking to some apprentice-receptionist boy, and I still haven't laid eyes on the source of the scent that's half soul-soothing, half whole-body-watering. But I know he's in here. I know he's close. I've never, ever felt my heart beat like this.

So swift, it's hard just to breathe.

So deep, it tickles my stomach.

So heavy, I swear -

Gravity's got nothing on this unparalleled grail.

Hands in my pockets, I sway slightly, looking around the shop. I've never stepped foot in a tattoo parlor before, but it's not really what I imagined. Crystals of light drip from an ample chandelier and the walls are glossy black and mostly bare, save for a floor to ceiling mirror on one. Thickly edged with ornate gold. Alice would love it.

"What about you?" The boy behind the counter asks. I like his eyes. They're wolf-cub-dark and unexpectedly sharp, the opposite of his safe smile, but it isn't him, pulling my deepest strings, and it isn't the clean-cut grizzly bear of a man that walks up behind him.

"Are you getting anything?"

I shake my head, watching them both fall head over feet in love and lust they both know they shouldn't. Because of my age. Because of the age they think I am.

I love this part.

I love watching men writhe against their nature.

"You must be Emmett, hi," Jessica says, extending one hand to the taller of the two and flipping her hair with her other. "I'm Jessica. Do you prefer Emmett or Anchor, actually?"

He tugs his attention from me and gives Jessica a grin to rival Puck himself.

"Anchor, Jessica, right, the prayer thing." He shakes her hand and gestures to boy his left. "This is EKG. He'll get your paperwork ready. Let me get your design."

While they go over things, I browse around like any normal customer might. I take a few steps across the penny-mosaic floor and rock onto the tiptoes of my boots, craning my neck a bit to catch a peek at the row of rooms in the back. Some have scarlet velvet curtains pulled closed, some don't. Derisive chatter floats from one, buzzing from a couple others. Brash bass beats deeply from mounted speakers, and the whole place smells clean and feral at the same time. Like witch hazel, lavender soap, and the cucumber-cloaked scent of copperheads.

There's something darker underneath all of it.

Warmer.

Him.

Jessica makes a nervous-excited sound, practically squeaking when he shows her the design. "Yes, let's do it, yes!"

I sneak a glimpse into every open curtain as I follow the two of them to his room so she can try on the stencil. Whoever is edging my instincts is so close now, I can taste it. Craving cascades between my vertebrae with each step, flooding my veins with black light and burning sugar. Making my lips tingle and my knees weak.

Making me yearn to crawl.

Making me softer than cotton candy clouds. Eden's first pink flowers. As soft as that last little breath mortals take, right before they come undone -

"Right here," Anchor tells Jessica, gesturing to the last room on the left as we pass the second to last room on the right, and I see him. Eyes closed. Something written across the lids I can't make out. He lies tense as a wire on his left side while another man marks art along his right side. I can't tell what it is either, and I can't linger without looking weird or rude, but all of nature contends with my movements as I turn from him when Anchor prompts me toward his room instead, "Come on in."

The space is small and cluttered, and having the cause of such a visceral reaction out of my sight feels like a strike-slip fault. A supercell gathering inside my rib cage. Letting a curtain fall between where he is and where I am is a ring of fire around my throbbing, godforsaken heart, and for a second, I don't know what I'm doing. Why am I standing here staring at nautical stars and black-lined butterflies instead of slinking across the hall and beckoning closed eyes open?

"It's huge, oh my - Bella, look at this."

I look and she talks, but it's not easy to focus on how I'm supposed to act when all I can feel is nearness. Heat. Need. I've been playing this part for so long, city after city, putting self-preservation ahead of self-serving. Self-indulging. I don't know what it is about this man that's shaken my most innate drive so wide awake, but I know where I'm going tonight. The second I'm free of this disguise -

His scent might as well be a chain around my neck now.

No matter where either of us goes -

He'll never be out of reach again.

"Okay, so be honest," Jessica turns back to her artist. "How bad is it going to hurt?"

They talk some more, try on the stencil, draw some changes on her skin. It takes forever. There's a chair, and I sit down because it's the human thing to do, but it's agonizing. Staying put. Feigning interest. Not closing my eyes and reveling in what's happening to me.

I could snuff out everyone in here, everyone outside. I could slaughter this entire town if I wanted to, effortlessly if it got me what I want. But the stranger two doors down is softening me to no end. Even though I can't see him. Even with this space between our bodies. Even when I think I can't possibly get any softer, with every carefully measured breath, I melt a little more.

The way I cozy up from the inside out to new prey has always felt good.

But this moves beyond measure.

And knowing I'll seek him tonight is comforting, but it isn't enough.

When it's time for Jessica to fill out the form, I offer to go get it just to steal another look. I memorize everything I can this time. Hair the color of cinnamon cider and still-hot cinders crowns his head, long enough to fall past his ears before giving way to slightly darker sideburns and a jawline as sharp as a grackle's discord. Both knees peek out from the holes in his faded black jeans, and the ink sinking into his side is far from his first. Still under the needle, eyes closed, even his lids are tattooed with a simple black warning -

don't wake

Going back into the little room I'm supposed to be in is a slightly easier this time because I'm high on the sight of him. But once Anchor and Jessica get started, the minutes start to slow down. Seconds creep between the buzz of his gun, her pained breathing, and their even more painful small talk.

"So, Anchor, huh? What are you like, a sailor or something?"

"Yeah right." He smiles, drawing along. "Everybody here's got some ink they maybe wish they didn't, but are maybe too proud to cover up."

He pauses to show her the anchor and rope that's, to say the least, a little worse for wear on his dense bicep.

"Seth is EKG for the music notes that turn into a heartbeat around his wrist. Riley is Rosary for the one on his chest. Everybody's got some obvious shit. Compass. Birds. Grim." He laughs wryly. Jessica goes along. Anchor clears his throat and gets back to work.

Time drags. Pretending to be present borders torture.

He's talking now, across the hallway. My prey and his artist. They're discussing some movie, and I don't need to see to know which one is him. I know his voice by what it does to me.

I know it's his because for the first time in three millennia, for the first time since my very first time -

I'm blushing.

And not just my cheeks.

I feel coquette pink burn beneath my black tee, spreading across my chest and down my belly, along my arms, into even my palms, and lower. Deeper. I nip my bottom lip and act like nothing's happening, like I'm just Jessica Stanley's bored support friend and not a half-starved hell kitten, bearing a full-body blush that makes me ache to fall on all fours and honey up to him.

"Outline's all done," Anchor says, cleaning Jessica's side with something that must feel good, based on her extra-audible exhale. "Ready for a break?"

"Yes, God, yes. My whole body is like, vibrating. Wow-" she does another exaggerated exhale as she sits up a bit, trying to look at it. "Holy shit -"

He tells her to take her time, and she goes on and on as she stands up in front of the mirror. He steps out for some air, but not before she asks if they have any water.

"Your bottle's in the car," I chime in before he can answer. "I'll go get it."

Any excuse. Anything for another glimpse.

The man who doesn't know he's already mine is standing now, turned mostly away from the open curtain, with a patch taped up his side. Pulling a black sweater over his head, he doesn't see me pass.

Ask me how hard it is to keep walking.

Ask how badly I want to turn around and drag my nose and lips up his unharmed side, pushing his sweater back up to fill my chest with his scent.

Ask how I know he'd let me.

Even if he startled at first.

He'd let me.

Outside, the air is fresh and cool, forcing me to feel more than just need. Tricking me into thinking. About Alice. About our stupid cover. About survival outside of Volterra, and how risky someone who puts me so deeply into my place with just his nearness could be.

I head to Jessica's car and back again at a normal, humanly-quick pace.

He's standing at the computer with his arms crossed when I open the door. The EKG kid is showing him something. Only one of them looks up as I enter.

"Hey, how's it going back there?" Wolf pup boy asks with a smile.

Mine whether he acknowledges me or not steps away, heading toward the opposite end of the counter and bending to look for something behind it.

I toss my hair as I go by, sending my scent floating toward them.

He doesn't have to look to be lured. I know this. Sight is the weakest of leashes. But how badly I want his eyes on me feels like a little black hole, opening up in the base of my throat.

By the time Jessica and Anchor start going again, all my longing has kicked back into high gear, working with his proximity to make me as soft as the heart of a cherub and as pink as an Amandine rose. It's equally and entirely enamoring and enraging, feeling myself become something so delicate.

I hate that I love it so much.

That I don't want it to ever, ever end.

The second half of the session takes another round of forever. By the time it's done and he's patching her up, I'm as beside myself as one can be without actually splitting in two. I'm on my feet, swaying inside to the distant cadence of his voice, measuring his footsteps and biting my lip to the beat of his heart while Jessica and Anchor talk and talk. When they're finally, truly finished, I'm the last one out of the small room for subtlety's sake, keeping my back straight and my stride casual despite every aching impulse to give in. Get down on my hands and knees, and trickle to him like a creek to the sea.

His slenderly sinewed back is turned as we head to the desk out front. Standing over a different computer now, he clicks around and writes some notes in a calendar. Subtle tension strains his whole frame the closer I get, and even uncomfortable, he's graceful in stature and tall like a thunderstorm when he stands up straight. His worn-thin black sweater hangs almost entirely off one shoulder, revealing half a stained glass spider web and tight, underlying muscle. Messy dark auburn falls over the Sistine hands of Elohim and Adam, tattooed in blood red across the back of his neck, and every smooth movement of his right hand makes the golden Star of Ishtar hanging from his ear sway.

Just like me for him.

Just like before, he doesn't turn around.

And I know I'm too sweet on him to think straight, but it feels intentional.

Like he's ignoring me on purpose.

My blush burns from flirtatious to profane as I wander in his general direction, fake-checking-out the bookshelf of photo albums.

When he walks away, I all but snap.

"How long have you guys been open?" I ask quickly, hoping he'll turn around, hating the hollow words. The deception. The muzzle of this life on the unslakable heat I was born into.

The man that's going to beg me later keeps walking. I gather all my hair up just let it back down, slow and full around my shoulders, urging irresistible notes of unearthly innocence all through the shop.

Everyone looks. Even Jessica. Everyone but him.

Him.

"Is it your place?" I meet Anchor's heavily dilated eyes so he'll follow mine when I gesture to all that matters now. "Or his maybe?"

I know tall, dark, and deeply magnetic hears me, but he still doesn't stop. Pulling a joint from a tin in his back pocket with a completely blacked-out hand - palm, fingers, all of it covered in permanent ink - he walks to the far end of the shop. He opens the door while Anchor gives me some answer, but all I can hear is the spark of a lighter. All I can see before mine for the taking steps out into the dark is the littlest flame, trembling in his hands.